A jidou club is apparently an after school club for elementary school kids. Although sometimes it seems to start in the morning, so perhaps its more than that. Basically its just somewhere to go play games for a few hours, then have something to eat. Whatever it is its a lot of fun.
Once again my first experience of the Jidou club (and my second for that matter) was a solo affair, although Hiromi was there at least to lend me some assistance. With nursery kids the language difficulties aren’t really a problem, but by this age the kids aren’t as easily entertained by tickling, and expect me to talk and understand them. Which is incredibly hard, as they speak fast, and always mumble. Thankfully there is one kid in particular who has been such a help to me, he doesn’t know anymore English than the others, but he seems to have taken it upon himself to guide me through my time there, he seems to actually enjoy looking stuff up in my dictionary so he can speak to me. So I’ve grown quite fond of him.
So my first day there was spent playing Lego, eating a fantastic curry, then playing musical chairs, dodgeball, football and badminton. Nice variety I thought. Second week followed a pretty similar format, only I ended up with an enormous blister after showing of my football skills, so then had to resort to slightly more sendentary activities. Its only when you play Lego with young kids that I remember how much fun it is. The stuff the kids make is great, and when we’ve finished we try to combine them into one super lego machine…so far none of them have quite as super as they have been incredibly ugly and structurally weak. But we’re getting there. I haven’t played dodgeball before, and the only knowledge I have of it is from Southpark, which isn’t really an accurate depiction as far as I could tell. Its a good laugh tho, I can’t really be bothered to explain the rules in this post, perhaps I’ll come back later and edit this post in the future, but for now, google is your friend. The only problem is that I am a little stronger than the kids playing, so mostly I have to throw the ball at the teachers. Really hope they don’t think I have something against them.
The kids had great fun trying to bandage up my blister last week, was quite touching to see them fighting over the chance to touch my feet! Next time, remember shoes! As with all my other posts, please check out the photography section for more photos (surprisingly) Click here for a link to the photo album for the day.
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